Re: [Phys-l] Nurture vs Nature (Was:Student engagement)

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Sorry, if I insulted, but I have felt that way many many times.

There are records of adoptions that can be perused for some reasons.  So the
statistics is not huge.    So I mistook humor for seriousness.  Maybe it is
the problem that liberals have less of a sense of humor than conservatives.
Really, I am not kidding there, as they have done studies showing this.  But
seriously all research involves a huge amount of work and they can even just
go door to door asking questions, or pore over huge amounts of documents.
Actually we have it easy now with search engines and articles on line
available at research libraries.

Actually psychologists have been very good, but the misuse of pop psych has
been enormous.  Psychologists and psychiatrists have come up with non drug
cognitive therapies which can get rid of phobias such as fear of flying, or
treat depression without the use of drugs in a fairly small number of
sessions.  Cog therapy actually resembles PER in many respects.  A good
psychologist helped my son put his life together and helped him develop
strategies which enabled him to become an A student in engineering courses.
Psychiatrists (psychologists with a medical license) can diagnose LD and the
good ones prescribe good therapy and drugs if needed.  And yes there are
some who overprescribe.  I have seen the good effects in action.  I also
know a physics teacher who can not survive without 45mg of Ritalin 3 times a
day.  Until this type of drug started being used, he was in a fog 23.5-7.
Once every few weeks it would lift and he had to plan the next few weeks in
the few lucid hours.  He would write down his plans, and then just follow
them.  Drug therapy is excellent for bipolar disorder.  There are therapies
for some things like dyslexia, and they work very well especially before age
7.  But it needs to be diagnosed by a professional.  The therapy can be
expensive in the long term, I know this from personal family experience.
But some mental problems are even more intractable than education.  Oh and
the psychologist Feuerstein is a miracle worker with low IQ children.

Larry Niven, an acute observer of the human condition, wrote a wonderful
story about a businessman who was insane, but cured under therapy.  In his
desk he had a handy device which trimmed and buffed his nails.  He just
stuck in his hand and it did the job plus gave him his daily dose of
medicine.  So one day the medicine ran out and he killed someone.  But since
he was insane he was just put back on the drug.  It turns out that the
relative of the victim tried to kill the businessman.  He escaped in Buzzard
ram jet, and the relative pursued him.  He was now sane so he did not want
to kill the relative, but eventually he did it by aiming the exhaust at the
relative's jet.  But the jet was now on autopilot set to ram.  So as he got
closer and closer to C, he spent the rest of the life of the universe trying
to escape.  We are not there, but the psychologists are coming up with good
things that might help us properly treat various forms of insanity and
mental disability.  Downes syndrome therapy is very successful now in
treating the development of retardation.  I am actually involved in an
experimental treatment for autism, which is very difficult.  No, not what
you think, I am helping treat, not being treated!  So I strongly disagree
with the idea that modern psychology has on the balance been bad.  Freud is
another question.

Lawyers are a necessary evil.  Remember the phrase "Lets kill all the
lawyers" this was uttered to get rid of the villain's impediments.  Without
lawyers we would be at the mercy of dictators.  I have seen cases of this in
TX where innocent people are thrown in jail on just the word of the police
that they were publicly intoxicated, but they did not do any alcohol
testing.  It is possible to fight it with a good lawyer, but the expense and
inconvenience is so high that usually it is not worth it.  But just think
what might go on if there were no lawyers to negotiate the legal system.  So
just like democracy is not a great system of governance, it is much better
than the alternatives, so lawyers are better than the alternative.  But one
can have too many of them, or not enough.

What about physicists and chemists.  We invented much more efficient killing
machines.  Biologists are not far behind.  About the only people you can not
blame for modern society's ills are the Amish.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> First of all, what I sent is hardly ridicule--just, I thought, an amusing
> comment--but now I'm being insulted! ;-(    I seriously have wondered how
> they find so many separated identical twins.  OTOH--lawyers and
> psychologists, IMO, have had a net negative affect on our society in the
> past few decades.